My friend, Chris Helzer, dropped another good blog post this morning. The Joy and Gratification of Strategic Prairie Restoration ostensibly discusses his extensive and admirable work of converting low-productivity row crop fields to high-diversity prairie. But beneath his exquisite photos and dynamic descriptions lies a poignant reminder of how small-minded humans can be.
Chris finds it frustrating when people complain that his restored prairies are not real because soil organics are lower than in unplowed prairies, or because the plant abundance doesn’t exactly match, or because the patches are too small to support bison, prairie, dogs, elk, and wolves. The essay goes on to describe expectations, objectives, and functions, and how these things fit into the greater scheme of things.
The “purist” critics Chris describes aren’t limited to prairie snobs. As a writer, I encounter this attitude often. When I self-published my first book, some people looked down on it (and me) because “. . . that’s not real publishing. You have to have an agent and use a traditional publisher.” That makes me a phony, I guess. But my projects, like Chris’s, serve what—to me—is an important purpose.
Writing is my creative outlet. It’s fun. I have stories I want to share, and publishing non-traditionally is a way I can do that without waiting forever and relying on the whims and preferences of agents. Besides, I’ve heard it’s nearly impossible for an unknown author to even find an agent.
Self-publishing has pros and cons, of course. On the plus side, self-published works provide a bigger profit margin and the authors retain all of the rights. But they also must do all of the work themselves, or hire help with editing, cover design, and illustrations. They must learn the ins and outs of production via Amazon KDP, Ingram Spark, and other companies, and they have to do all of their own marketing.
A traditional publisher, if your agent can snag one, handles all of the production work from manuscript to finished project, which is no trivial effort. But that comes at the cost of a much smaller royalty to the author and a loss of rights, including copyright, control over the publishing process, and republishing. Their editors can demand changes to a manuscript that the author may not like. And the author will still be stuck with doing most of their own marketing. All of this makes a pretty good case to me for the non-traditional.
Hybrid publishing presents a nice compromise, especially for those of us who are technologically challenged. I’m not speaking of vanity (also known as subsidy) publishers. Some of those folks have no meaningful standards and will publish anything in exchange for money. A true hybrid publisher has a quality review process and will only publish work that meets their criteria. Many of them will help with marketing. Authors retain their rights. I’m trying this approach with my new book, due to be out very soon, perhaps even next week.
So, I agree with Chris—our work is definitely real, and meaningful, at least to some people.
Stay tuned!
#WhatsReal #publishing #prairies
(Photo by Chris Helzer)
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